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ENVY
ENVY , USA , 2004, MPAA Rating : PG-13 for language and sexual/crude humor
I have always adored Christopher Walken, but never more than while enduring ENVY, a flick as deadly to the concept of entertainment as the deadly sin of the same name is to one’s mortal soul. Walken is an actor who can do more with less than pretty much anyone else I can think of and he certainly has his work cut out for him here, stuck as he is in a dreary one-joke deathtrap whose punchline is delivered in the first 15 minutes. That leaves the other 80 or so minutes with nothing going for them except that sheer force of his personality and gloriously off-kilter charisma that takes charge of any screen on which he appears. It’s not that his character, the J-Man, a terminally scruffy barfly with inflated rhetoric, vainglorious schemes, and moral neutrality is anything particularly original. But when he sidles up to Ben Stiller’s character and begins to wax grandeloquently about the virtues of the perfect pretzel, it’s enough to bring tears of relief to the poor schmoos stuck in the theater.
The premise might have seemed like a promising one, a black comedy about what happens when your best friend, who isn’t the corporate go-getter that you are, comes up with a brilliant idea and cashes in like Croesus. The friend, Nick (Jack Black) dreams up Vapoorize, a spray that can make doo-doo disappear. It’s a boon for the urban dog owner and a source of infinite irritation to best pal, Tim (Ben Stiller), who laughed off the chance to go 50-50 with Nick when the idea was in its development stage. It’s not just that Nick’s rich, it’s that he’s built his uber-mansion across the street from Tim’s house. As I said, it’s all over before you’ve gotten settled into your seat properly, but screenwriter Steve Adams doesn’t seem to realize that. Instead, he and enabler/director Barry Levinson have these characters run around rehashing the premise that Tim’s unhappy and Nick’s oblivious. By the time we come to the doo-doo duet (don’t ask), there’s nothing for it but to grit your teeth and wait for Walken to show up again. Or, make a break for it and get one of those pretzels that he was going on about.
The best Adams can come up with is flan. Oh, there’s some other stuff, like having Rachel Weisz and Amy Poehler as Tim and Nick’s respective wives embarrassingly reduced to playing brainless bimbettes, but that’s incidental. For some reason Adams thinks that the mere mention of the word “flan” will evoke gales of laughter from his audience. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good flan, and if you say the word over and over again, there is a semi-silly mellifluous quality to it, but pinning the comedy hopes of a film on the pronouncation of a custard dessert, uh uh. The worst part is what all this has done to Stiller and Black. The former does little but knit his brows and occasionally roll his eyes to express anguish, but perhaps it's actually the realization at what a mess he’s found himself in. As for the latter, even with the kaleidoscope-inspired wardrobe and rich-person fluffy hair, he seems oddly deflated, just going through the motions of boundlessly manic energy.
Suffering may build character, but experiencing ENVY only breeds contempt for an industry that has the temerity to put this drivel on screens and expect the public to pay to see it.
My rating:
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